


Scratch The Itch

by DragoJustine



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Humor, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-11-23
Updated: 2008-11-23
Packaged: 2017-12-17 19:35:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/871216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DragoJustine/pseuds/DragoJustine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John Sheppard is an idiot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scratch The Itch

**Author's Note:**

> From the Fannish Bulwer-Lytton, the (fake) horrible first sentence awards. Quite a lot of people wanted to see this one as fic. This is CRACK, utterly without pretense at quality. First sentence written by the hilarious Introductory.

After being fucked by Caldwell for three weeks, it occurred to John that maybe he was going about it all wrong and Caldwell wasn't really the problem, much like when you think your nose is itchy and it's really your left arm or the bottom of your foot that needs the scratching. Things like that tended to happen to him a lot.

Well, okay, probably he should start at the beginning. Because John hated telling stories, and hated talking, and hated talking about himself most of all, and this would probably go faster if he managed to put it in some kind of order.

So it all started when John decided to take matters into his own hands on planet P6X-452, aka the one with the bright blue sun and natives extraordinarily good at booby traps and prison cells. Caldwell was very nearly there on the Daedalus and Woolsey was apparently yammering away at the leader of the booby-trap-happy natives about a diplomatic solution, but the guard turned his back and the opening was there, and Rodney was panicking and starting to hyperventilate just a little, and if anybody expected John to just sit by while Rodney…

Okay, so whatever the hell it was with Rodney probably started a long time before that, but whatever. 

John had been, you know, a little bit out of sorts for awhile. Maybe it was Teyla being busy with the baby, not available to kick his ass as often as he liked. Or maybe it was having Rodney kidnapped out from under him and having to haul ass to the other side of the galaxy to get him back. Or maybe he was getting a cold. 

So the thing on P6X-452 happened, and John tried to make a jailbreak, and the whole team plus three engineers from the Daedalus nearly got executed before Caldwell swooped in for a last-minute bailout. 

Then he ended up trapped in Woolsey's office while Woolsey and Caldwell said ridiculously polite things to each other through gritted teeth, and Woolsey looked sweaty and nervous and made vague placating motions with his hands. 

John figured his best bet was to stare straight over Caldwell's left shoulder like he was still a cadet and wait for Woolsey and Caldwell to finish being political at each other and let him go. But then Caldwell asked, all sweet, "Mr. Woolsey, could we use the room a moment?" and Woolsey retreated. 

Caldwell whirled on John the minute the door closed and leveled an accusing finger. "As for you, Colonel, I cannot begin to tell you how sick I am of the constant stream of hot-headed incompetence manifested on this base. Just because you feel an irresistible urge to play the idiotic hero doesn't mean that I have to allow my engineers to be endangered by your…"

He went on for quite awhile. John just let it roll over him. It felt... not like one would expect that kind of bitchy chewing-out from a superior officer. Actually, it felt pretty... soothing.

Caldwell stopped abruptly and stared at him. John wasn't sure exactly what he was staring at. Possibly John was a little flushed. And possibly Caldwell saw the tent in his pants. But, well, these things happened, right? But Caldwell seemed to find it amusing, and worth remarking on, and even worth meeting up with John in some empty quarters in the North wing of the city later that night.

So the thing started with Caldwell. John met him in the empty quarters and found him lounging back in a chair with a glass of something or other in his hand. John walked in and stood in front of him without speaking. Caldwell took another sip of his drink. He didn't offer any. 

Finally, Caldwell spoke. "Well, Sheppard. You're not actually under my command, as much as I might like it. And you're so close-mouthed you can't help but be discreet. And it seemed earlier today that there might be something you wanted from me." 

John swallowed hard. The vaguely out of sorts feeling that had been haunting him for the last few weeks intensified. He felt a little bit like he wanted to go to the gym with Ronon and get the crap beaten out of him, nice and hard and sweaty. Probably that's all that had been wrong this last little while: not enough exercise. 

Caldwell was still waiting. John upgraded the out of sorts to straight-up butterflies. He stuck his hands in his pockets, tried to remember what line of the conversation they were on, and choked out, "Yeah."

Caldwell seemed pretty amused by that, and put his drink down and spread his legs. "So how about you come over here and suck me?"

So John got to suck some cock, which was, well. Really good, thick and salty and slightly pungent and wet and rhythmic, and by the time Caldwell pushed his head off John was panting and gasping and moaning and straining forward against Caldwell's hand to try to get that cock back in his mouth. And all the out of sorts, all the butterflies, were completely quieted. 

Later John got fucked so hard he had to brace his arm against the wall to keep from getting jammed right up into it, so hard that his head went empty and light and his vision blacked out. 

He left the room with a grin on his face and a spring in his step, and it was four whole days before the vaguely unsettled feeling in his gut came back. 

"Hey, Rodney," he asked at breakfast. "You've got the day off, right?"

"Well, theoretically," Rodney answered, waving an egg-laden fork rather dangerously. "Though you know how things go around here, but yes."

"That's awesome, cause I just got the new Silent Hill game on this week's upload, and--"

"Well, thanks." Rodney stood up a little too abruptly. "But I think today I might ask Jennifer…" He snatched the last muffin off his half-finished tray and hurried away. 

Vaguely unsettled progressed to out of sorts by afternoon, after Rodney holed himself up in his lab all day and didn’t come for Silent Hill or Jennifer. Radek kept giving him dirty looks, which made him twitchy because Radek's dirty looks always felt utterly sincere and well-founded, even when John couldn't figure out what that good founding could possibly be. He called Ronon to come spar, and got his ass thoroughly kicked. That reduced the out of sorts back to unsettled, but the effect only lasted until the next morning.

A subtle call to the Daedalus ended with Caldwell bending him over with a tight grip on his wrist in a storage compartment. John tensed his arms and tested the grip. _I could probably take him_ , he thought, but decided not to. 

That was the right decision, obviously, since it got him fucked. Not hard and fast this time, but long and smooth and steady. It was a good thing bulkheads designed to resist the vacuum of space were pretty much soundproof, because John pounded on the wall and gasped and called Caldwell quite a lot of very dirty names telling him to go harder already, and possibly made quite a bit of noise at the very end. 

When John got back, Rodney took one look at him, said, "Oh, for God's sake," and left the room. 

That time it only took two days before the unsettled feeling came back. John asked Rodney to come watch some Babylon 5, but Rodney muttered something about transporter optimization algorithms and Jennifer. 

John wandered around his quarters that evening trying to figure out exactly what this thing was in the pit of his stomach. He didn't actually much want to spar with Ronon. Finally he decided he was just hungry and headed to the mess to get a sandwich. It only helped a little. 

He sent a quick note to Caldwell. Caldwell suggested the East pier, and John turned him down without particularly coming up with an excuse for why. They met in that same room in the North end of the city and Caldwell fucked John on the bed this time, with John's legs pushed up till his hamstrings ached. John actually begged that time, said "fuck me" in a desperate voice and went utterly limp while Caldwell did. 

It only took twenty-four hours for the clenching in the pit of his stomach to come back, and John started wondering for the first time whether maybe Caldwell was part of the problem as well as the solution. 

The sex was good-- it was so, so good, and Caldwell didn't seem inclined to turn down the most enthusiastic blowjobs in two galaxies, and he seemed to like the way John went needy and desperate for his cock, and anyway, who's to say whether John might feel just as bad if he stopped as if he kept doing this. So. 

But it got worse. Rodney hardly poked his head out of the labs, and when he did it was only to awkwardly chat Jennifer up in the mess. Radek's dirty looks got worse. Teyla went easier on him in their sparring practices and kept poking and prodding at him to talk about his feelings. Ronon went _harder_ on him, which was problematic enough that he could only actually handle it every three days or so. Lorne wouldn't stop pestering him, because apparently he was doing even less of his paperwork than normal. He hadn't had a beer on the pier or game or so much as an episode of Star Trek with Rodney in three weeks. He was wandering down to the mess for a midnight sandwich pretty much every night. He felt like he was maybe getting a bit of a flu, except Keller said he wasn't and Rodney was the designated hypochondriac in this city.

And so, after getting fucked by Caldwell for three weeks, John decided maybe it was like when you think your nose is itchy and it's really the bottom of your foot that needs the scratching. 

He ambushed Rodney in the lab after everyone else left and simply stood in front of the door. Rodney crossed his arms and glared, and John screwed up his courage.

"So I think I'm going about this all wrong."

"What, proving yourself to be the most unprofessional military commander in the history of the US Air Force?" 

"No," John said. "The wanting to get fucked thing." 

"You seem to have solved that." Rodney stuck his chin out defiantly. 

"Yeah," John agreed. "But, you know, not really." 

Then he stepped up and kissed Rodney. 

So that was how John figured it out.


End file.
